Comments (39)

This is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about yesterday when I said I don't worry at all about the religious fundamentalists in the US. They pose no real threat. This kind of things does, and with your money to boot.

Stop eating meat and our eyes will evolve back to the sides of our heads and something that still eats meat will our predator. That's how life on planet Gaia works. Pretending it isn't true doesn't make it so. Reread Wells' "The Time Machine".

The city of Portland, and neighbouring counties are on the way for more ways to waste your money, tax , raise fees and ignore laws why be surprised? The leftist losers wish to control what they wish to control. Portland will elect & reelect more leftist politicians, surprise me not. No one cares, who is to stop the insanity?

"Don’t worry about protein. Many plants have more protein per calorie than meat."

This may or may not be true depending on the foods you're comparing. However, aside from a couple of vegetable sources, vegetables don't have complete proteins and you have to combine two or more plant sources with complementary amino acids to get complete proteins.

There's a lot more to being a healthy vegetarian or "semi-vegetarian" (w/e that is) than just removing meat from your diet. But, the CoP only seems to focus on being "green" and never really considers the practical implications of their policies.

More nonsense from Portland city hall, true. But I'm a tad confused on how a college student wanting contraceptive coverage from her insurance is exactly like the city wasting $ on questionable nutritional advice, sally.

Speaking of a certain sci-fi flick mentioned above, don't you ever wonder about that "pioneering" composting facility at North Plains? After all, environmentalists already have serious concerns about cemeteries. If they (i.e, we the tax/ratepayer subsidizers) ever get the process down, the only piece missing would be the subsidized euthanasia clinics to assist the tired, the old, the sick, the indebted, or the unproductive to pay off their debts to society (or the Water Bureau) while making a graceful exit.

What would I do without the city telling me how to plan my meals, get to work, sort my trash, use or not use water, carry my groceries home, etc.?

I've been too hard on the nice folks in local government, it's no wonder the streets suck, the decent paying jobs are fleeing, and the city is a shooting gallery for wanna be thugs, they have so many bigger, more important problems to address. Saving the world is really hard!

I'm so tired of the "meat is so energy intensive" argument. It fails to take into account the different methods of raising meat. Animals pastured their entire life preserve perennial vegetation, mitigating tillage, and require less gasoline, pesticides, and fertilizers. Some aren't fed corn or soy. They provide organic fertilizer to grow those vegetables you're supposed to substitute for meat. Plus, they make for a balanced, tasty meal when combined with all the other good foods of the world. I guess that remains too nuanced a view of "meat."

Here's an off-topic question that Mr. Grumpy's slightly macabre question brought to my mind: Why isn't the North Plains composting facility being pushed to burn methane (reduce smell/generate electricity) with the same effort that is being put into the Columbia Biogas plea for public dollars? Doesn't it make more sense to do it out there - where we're already sending our waste?

All forms of food production require energy... If you can grow all your food on your own half-acre plot (plenty of room for some crops, a couple chickens, maybe a goat or a cow or two), then that requires hardly any electricity compared to having to have your food produced and transported from elsewhere.

Of course, Portland decided that it wasn't right for us to have large plots - we can only have 150 square feet of space per person, stacked up in tall concrete structures, so we can't grow anything ourselves; and Portland's tiny 200 foot by 200 foot city blocks don't leave enough room on the rooftops to grow crops for an entire condo bunker. And then those tall buildings require more energy to heat and cool than simple farmhouses...plus being built downtown, the ground is impermeable so massive water treatment plants are required, and the city pumps and transports water from how many miles away instead of homes being built specifically where water is nearby?

Of course...Portland used to be marshes and swamps. That's why the Hudsons Bay Company set up their settlement in Vancouver while Portland was basically nothing. It took a lot of energy to fill in all this unusable land, then raise it higher because of the continual Willamette River floods...destroying all of the natural land and wildlife habitat...

This website put out by the City of Portland, our tax dollars are paying for that?

Since when do we need to have this kind of behavioral change intrusion from our city hall? What we should eat, what kind of stuff we should buy and mend and repair?

If those who are so into climate change and behavioral change, GO go into the private sector, take your climate and behavioral change ideas and pay for your own agenda
with planners, printouts, websites, etc.

We have money to pay for all of this yet no roads paved for five years, yada yada yada!

While I am at it, many of you know my concerns about our truly sustainable water system. There seems to be no mention from those change promoters for "our healthy lifestyles" about the radon issue or that our drinking water could be seriously degraded?

I recently asked one from the Portland Sustainability Institute what their position was on our Bull Run Water matter. He said they didn't have one and and he didn't at all seem concerned.

"I'm a tad confused on how a college student wanting contraceptive coverage from her insurance is exactly like the city wasting $ on questionable nutritional advice, sally."

Ex-bartender: Fair enough. I should not have said exactly. But I did mean to draw a comparison with "progressive" policies that evolve to so much governmental mandate. The discussion was about the religious right, and they are not the "problem" with Catholic church which is its own bastion of very longstanding dogma.

a) Climate Change (meaning the false assumption that human-produced CO2 is causing catastrophic climate conditions) is much more likely to be a natural cycle. The average global temperature (if that can even be measured) has been essentially flat for the last 12-15 years.

b) More and more people are finding out that a diet of grains is what is causing most of our health problems. There was recently a heart surgeon of 25 years, that said that the food pyramid chart is all wrong and that a diet that is composed of mostly animal fat is the best diet to have a healthy heart.

c) Stop the F telling me what to do! Especially since you are so freaking ignorant of the natural world. Your supposed solutions just happen to benefit those that are wanting to take us all down. Stop feeding the flames, you idiots!

How does everyone feel about potatoes, carrots, onions and beets? And those lovely local veggies WILL be 1/2 rotten and covered with slime by February in most households.
Of course no one has root cellars any more...or are those what the condo bunker 'storage units' are for?
But...of course! this will all make for more compost! And rats!

Par for the course for the local liberals. Not much difference between the local liberasl and and good old fashioned fascists. Some differences in basic beliefs, but the local liberals want to run your life with total control. It isn't exactly a "liberal" outlook, not sure why they use that label. Guess it sounds better than Hitler Youth.

Portlanders are not yet tired of the leaders they elected, nor their policies the create.

This blog and the commenters that bash Portland's ruling class are a minority of the overall voters. They will not effect much change, therefore Portland will have more of the same. Same song, different verse.

Things will have to get much worse, before the majority of Portlanders feel the pain, and vote to effect real change. Sad, but true.

liberal [ˈlɪbərəl ˈlɪbrəl]
adj
1. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) relating to or having social and political views that favour progress and reform
2. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) relating to or having policies or views advocating individual freedom
3. giving and generous in temperament or behaviour
4. tolerant of other people
5. abundant; lavish a liberal helping of cream
6. not strict; free a liberal translation
7. (Social Science / Education) of or relating to an education that aims to develop general cultural interests and intellectual ability
n
(Government, Politics & Diplomacy) a person who has liberal ideas or opinions
[from Latin līberālis of freedom, from līber free]

"Don’t worry about protein. Many plants have more protein per calorie than meat."

Who writes this stuff? Besides being, as INFO said, a grotesque waste of taxpayer dollars, it is bad nutritional advice. I see nothing about the nine essential amino acids that make up a complete protein that needs to be present in order for protein to be used in the body. Plant foods rarely have complete proteins in the proportion needed to be useful and must be suplemented by their complements. Animal-based proteins are complete proteins. (Check Wikipedia "Complete Protein" for more info.) PDX should get out of the preaching business, especially when it comes to advising people about health topics. True Believers are not scientific or objective sources of information and some people might mistake the CoP imprimature as a sign of expertise with harmful results. What arrogance and stupidity! It's like someone let the kids loose with taxpayer money to do their school projects, but hopefully most teachers wouldn't let this sloppy work get by.

Road Work

Miles run year to date: 156
At this date last year: 225
Total run in 2014: 401
In 2013: 257
In 2012: 129
In 2011: 113
In 2010: 125
In 2009: 67
In 2008: 28
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In 2006: 100
In 2005: 149
In 2004: 204
In 2003: 269